Cecilia Kang – författare

En gång i tiden var Facebook synonymt med framtiden. Folk vallfärdade till Silicon Valley för att bygga en bättre värld. Men så kom skandalerna. 2018 avslöjades att Facebooks ledning, med Mark Zuckerberg i spetsen, hade försökt dölja sanningen – att plattformen blivit en central kanal för desinformation, hat, och politisk propaganda.

Denna omtalade bok är en svidande granskning av Facebooks resa från utopiskt nätverk till global supermakt. Facebook lovar bättring efter varje skandal men fortsätter att växa till varje pris. Men hur högt blev priset, för medborgarna och för demokratin?

''An explosive new book'' Daily Mail''[A] careful, comprehensive interrogation of every major Facebook scandal. An Ugly Truth provides the kind of satisfaction you might get if you hired a private investigator to track a cheating spouse: it confirms your worst suspicions and then gives you all the dates and details you need to cut through the company''s spin'' New York Times__________________________________________Award-winning New York Times reporters Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang unveil the tech story of our times in this riveting, behind-the-scenes exposé that offers the definitive account of Facebook''s fall from grace. Once one of Silicon Valley''s greatest success stories, for the past five years Facebook has been under constant fire, roiled by controversies and crises. It turns out that while the tech giant was connecting the world, they were also mishandling users'' data, allowing the spread of fake news, and the amplification of dangerous, polarising hate speech. In a period of great upheaval, growth has remained the one constant under the leadership of Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg. Each has stood by as their technology is co-opted by hate-mongers, criminals and corrupt political regimes across the globe, with devastating consequences. In An Ugly Truth, they are at last held accountable.__________________________________________''Better sourced than all of its predecessors in the genre . . . makes for gripping as well as depressing reading. One of the book''s striking revelations is that there is more anxiety inside the company than we realised. Many Facebook employees have been anguished, frustrated or angry about what their employer has been doing in its relentless quest for growth. Some have tried to alert their superiors to their concerns. But time and again the bad news hasn''t persuaded those bosses because they didn''t sync with the overriding imperative of endless corporate growth . . . The problem of Facebook is Zuckerberg. And the question posed by this splendid book is: what are we going to do about him?'' Observer, Book of the Week''What marks this book out is how it gets under the corporate bonnet . . . to build a picture of astounding corporate arrogance and irresponsibility'' Sunday Times''A detailed dismantling of what happened at the highest levels of the company as it pursued a policy of deny, deflect and obfuscate'' New Statesman

For the past four years, Facebook has been under constant fire, roiled by cascading controversies and crises. It turns out that while the tech giant was connecting the world, they were also mishandling users' data, spreading fake news, and amplifying dangerous, polarizing hate speech. Leadership decisions at the company enabled, and then attempted to deflect attention from, massive privacy breaches and Russian meddling in the 2016 election. Time after time, Facebook's engineers were instructed to create tools that encouraged people to spend as much time on the platform as possible, even as those same tools boosted inflammatory rhetoric, conspiracy theories, and partisan filter bubbles. Each misstep set off a fresh cycle of earnest apologies and glib assurances: We'll do better. Yet these lapses were not accidental, and the apologies ultimately devoid of accountability. The issues surrounding privacy and speech aren't bugs; they are features, baked into the company's DNA--and its algorithms. And while consumers and lawmakers have focused their outrage on privacy breaches and misinformation, Facebook has been consolidating power, devouring competition, posting record profits, and shoring up its dominance via aggressive lobbying efforts. Drawing on their unrivaled sources, Frenkel and Kang take the reader inside the complex court politics, alliances and rivalries within the company, its growing political influence as well as its skirmishes with privacy groups and the FTC, to reveal that the missteps of the last four years were not an anomaly but an inevitability: this is how Facebook was built to perform. In a period of great upheaval, growth has remained the one constant under the leadership of Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg. Both have been held up as archetypes of uniquely 21st century executives--he, the tech "boy genius" turned billionaire, she, the ultimate woman in business, an inspiration to millions through her books and speeches. But sealed off in tight circles of advisors, increasingly paranoid and critical of outsiders, and hobbled by their own ambition and hubris, each has stood by as their technology is coopted by hate-mongers, criminals and corrupt political regimes across the globe, with devastating consequences.

En gång i tiden var Facebook synonymt med framtiden. Folk vallfärdade till Silicon Valley för att bygga en bättre värld. Men så kom skandalerna. 2018 avslöjades att Facebooks ledning, med Mark Zuckerberg i spetsen, hade försökt dölja sanningen – att plattformen blivit en central kanal för desinformation, hat, och politisk propaganda.

Denna omtalade bok är en svidande granskning av Facebooks resa från utopiskt nätverk till global supermakt. Facebook lovar bättring efter varje skandal men fortsätter att växa till varje pris. Men hur högt blev priset, för medborgarna och för demokratin?